Switzerland has just announced a ban on selling certain VW cars. I wonder who is next.

Doesn't surprise me, according to the Environmental performance index, they are officially top of the table, the greenest country on Earth! UK has a while to go, in 12th place, but that's still pretty good if you ask me

The thing is Charon, every biased story you seem to find wanting to "burn all diesels at dawn" there are just as many praising diesel vehicles too. Truth is, the so called tests and evidence they have done so far is very sketchy, some reports blame diesel cars for all the pollution in crowded cities, others say they account for just 15-20% of the pollution. You are forgetting that there are many places in the US with unacceptable levels of nitrous oxide and other "diesel" related pollutants, places where diesel cars only account for 3% of the vehicle population. The 7,600,000 diesel cars that are in the US have already been certified clean enough for your strict emissions standards, so it can't be them can it? Some people seem to overlook the fact that with major cities comes airports too, and let's not forget a passenger jet will use 4000 gallons of highly toxic fuel just to take off, the same as your average car would use in its entire life, dumping vast amounts of nitrous oxide and other such pollutants all over the surrounding area.

Although its obvious you're never going to be a fan of diesel vehicles, the US is slowly changing its attitude towrds them, a staggering 40% admit them would now consider a diesel car, thats up from just 13% a decade ago.

OK so you're just here to slag diesels and spam us with diesel negative stories, that's fine by me, if you're ignoring me, I'll happily ignore you too. We can all play Google warriors, but the idea of a forum is to discuss, learn new things and get your opinion across. If you base you're opinions on everything you read on the internet, then I can't help I'm afraid.

Diesels are not inherently evil. Done properly, they are excellent vehicles. Unfortunately, we're cultivating a world more and more of takers and cheaters rather than producers. Blaming diesel cars is like blaming legal gun owners. It's wrong thinking.

Agreed. Sadly people are very much like sheep, they hear one thing and that's their mind made up for life. The way the press conveys stories these days, you have to take everything with a bucket load of salt. I personally enjoy driving both petrol and diesel cars, I've had more petrol cars and would happily switch back to petrol anytime, especially if I want a sports car again. I'm not pretending one's better than the other, but the reason I currently drive diesel is because at the time, fuel prices were high, it does about 85% better mileage, insurance is 75% cheaper, road tax is free instead of £180 and despite having almost 50% less power, I have the same torque, so performance is pretty much on par. If I keep the car 5 years, it will save me the equivalent of $16,000 to $20,000 V's my old petrol powered car.

Diesels do indeed have a valid purpose in life. They are unexcelled for heavy trucks, farm equipment, heavy construction equipment, railroad locomotives, and ships. Those are all applications where the cost of fuel forms a substantial part of the cost of operation, and applications where engines are run for long periods at heavy load. Stationary equipment like generators and pumps are also good uses for diesels. Most of those applications have less stringent emission requirements, although on-road trucks are coming under the emission requirements. Even taxicabs make a good case for diesel power, because they burn a lot of fuel and are not expected to have sports-car type performance. Unfortunately, diesels remain dirty engines, and there is little that can be done about the engine itself. All that can be done is to try to clean up the exhaust with external equipment, all of which costs both money and performance.

You are forgetting that there are many places in the US with unacceptable levels of nitrous oxide and other "diesel" related pollutants, places where diesel cars only account for 3% of the vehicle population. The 7,600,000 diesel cars that are in the US have already been certified clean enough for your strict emissions standards, so it can't be them can it? Some people seem to overlook the fact that with major cities comes airports too, and let's not forget a passenger jet will use 4000 gallons of highly toxic fuel just to take off, the same as your average car would use in its entire life, dumping vast amounts of nitrous oxide and other such pollutants all over the surrounding area.

You forget that the US relies heavily on transportation of goods via diesel semi trucks and diesel locomotives. Not to mention all of the other diesel engines used in applications that Charon mentioned. I'm not biased either way, just filling in the rest of the picture where our diesel related pollution is probably coming from.

The USA is not the only country which relies on diesel power to move goods. Other countries may not rely as heavily on semi trucks as the US, but they do rely on trucks and railroads. I believe farm and construction equipment worldwide is diesel powered, with some exceptions for those using older and smaller gasoline tractors. Most oil moves in diesel powered tankers, and most coal for coal-fired power plants moves on diesel locomotive power. Most container ships are diesel powered, as are most cruise ships (and they burn some mighty dirty diesel fuel). Much work is being done to develop diesel engines for small aircraft, not because diesel is superior in aircraft but because leaded avgas is getting hard to find anywhere except the US. Aircraft and motorcycles are both applications with mighty few diesels, because both are sensitive to weight (actually, power-to-weight ratio) and diesels come up short compared to gasoline engines. For both motorcycles and passenger cars, the relatively low rpm of diesels is seen as a disadvantage in performance terms.